they will them it can't be done and they'll do it anyway - there's a word for people like that - crazy. >> i think it's the crazy people that will change the world and going to create the jobs of the future. people like richard branson who buck the system in search of breakthrough solutions to big challenges like space travel artificial intelligence and climate change. necessity is supposed to be the mother of invention and technology gives us things we don't need.

innovation changes the world. tonight i ask at what cost. i'm ali velshi, this is "real money". we are living through a technology revolution that has enriched our lives and disrupted them at the same time. once upon a time knowledge was accessible to the elite. then innovation brought us libraries and the printing press, making it accessible to more people. now almost anyone can download the contents of an encyclopedia on to a hand-held. democratizing access to knowledge. the dizzying pace of technology through computers, the internet has created opportunities for governments, businesses, entrepreneurs to boost growth and benefit society. the technology revolution left many behind. digital innovation in the

workplace eliminated the need for back-office jobs that were the back-bone of america's middle class. globalisation fuelled by connectivity pushed manufacturing and service jobs office where labour is cheaper. since the late 1990s, when the technology revolution made leaps and pounds median household incomes have slid. compounding the insecurity is a changing job market emphasising freelance work. whether you think the technology revolution is a net plus or loss for society, it is clear, there's no going back. in the next 25 years forecasters predict innovation to all. they will create products and services that consumers don't

know that they need. richard branson of virgin group fame says the world needs crazy entrepreneurs to push the envelope. i sat with him at at meeting of elite government and business leaders and asked how entrepreneurs from the wealthy 1% can use technology and innovation to solve problems for the rest of humanity. >> as an entrepreneur i think i can find ways of not just creating businesses but tackle some of the problems in this world. i think more entrepreneurs should take on some of the problems of the world, and use the entrepreneurial skills and clout to do so. we set up quite a few organizations on a not for profit basis. we set up the elders with nelson

mandela to get up and try to resolve the conflict in the world. we set up the oceanic to make the o sustainable. make sure we don't overfish or create marine reserves or slaughter sharks in a wholesale manner and so on and so on. >> i want to ask about entrepreneurship. we are in a world where a problem is wealth and equality. income equality is directly related to jobs and the quality that are available. when we look at the traditional industries and manufacturing around the world. labour goes to the cheapest place. we need to create high-value jobs. people seem to turn to stuff you have been going for a long time. entrepreneurship innovation finding new ideas, drivers of

the economy. do you see that as a bit of a solution. i look at elan mosque reminding me of you, saying you want to be buried on mars. it's the crazy stuff financing things. it is the crazy people that will change the world and create the jobs for the future and they are doing so. equally, i think for the vast majority of people that are working for companies, it is critical that people who run the companies make sure that they have them - the most fantastic job in those companies. we have an organization. we have been exampling time at work and how to make time at work more enjoyable. and more pleasant. and for instance one thing we are experimenting with is

telling people you can take holiday when you want. as long as you want and get the job done. >> strangely people don't abuse it. >> they don't abuse it. people working at home - you know if they want to go off and work at home it saves them an hour to come to work and go back to work. >> and transporting. >> and all the chatting at the office. they get their jobs done. i think flexibility in the workforce, making time at work and, you know people - your life is spent at work. 90%, 80% of time at work - it should be an enjoyable day. >> richard branson made his fortune by thumbing his nose at convention and thumbing his nose at things the world didn't know it needed. he wants to disrupt everything in the coming decade - and i

mean everything. >> reporter: it's a startling statistic. 40% of the fortune 500 companies we know and love today will have gone the way of the dinosaurs in 10 years. extinct. [ explosion ] >> reporter: the asteroid that will kill them - a digitally enabled disruptive world, a tool belt of technology creating exponential growth the likes of which we have never seen before. 3d printers robotics and artificial intelligence. synthetic biology, infinite computing, nanotechnology - doubling in power, increasing price, year after year. exponential growth giving entrepreneurs the ability to do more than what is thought possible and cost the less. that's the premise of a book "bold, how to go big, create

wealth and combat the world." it was written by this man, the founder of 15 companies and founder of x factor. an old friend a mentor of mine. you coloured the way i looked at the world. let's talk about the disruption. we have an example of it today. radio shack stopped trading. stock is down almost 99.6% since its peak. it's at $0.24. it's a story you know you remember as a young man. i do. it's a place you went to for tinkerers, that was the thing. it is one of those companies disrupted out of the marketplace. >> along with blockbuster and kodak, and others will follow. actually, a gentleman at yale richard foster when you studied a company, you would be on the stock exchange for 67ors before disrupted. -- 67 years before disrupted. today it's down to 50 years,

because the starting countries and reach is extraordinary. standing still is not option. you'll disrupt yourself or someone else will. >> you are talking 40% of current s&p companies gone or distrupd. that affects everyone we work for one, invest in them through stocks or have something to do with them. is this a net good or bad or just is? >> it just is. secondly we can focus on the negative side but we forget the positive side. skype disrupted long distance. is gave parents a chance to see the grandkids in l.a. we forget about the benefits that we have from a hyper connected world, how manufacturing with 3d printing is making things cheaper. i can wiggle my fingers, and what i'm thinking is delivered the next morning at your doorstep. >> incredible stuff that we have. making knorld cheaper and

easier more democratised helping health standards peter, another piece to your concept of exponential entrepreneurship, using competition to create breakthrough, you are no stranger. it's been on the cutting edge of innovation let's take a look... >> reporter: who knew the world needed a commercial space industry a new way to clean oil spills quickly from the world ocean or a hand-held medical triquarter like the one on star trek diagnosing a patient with the wave of a chanted. x prize created competition to get the world's biggest thinkers working on ideas that will change the world. but where no market exists. >> peter, i have been involved with x prize. this is the model of space ship one. in is my own.

you gave berth. we were talking to richard branson, spaceship ii but it started with a dream of yours to create an incentivized competition that led to the creation of space ship 1. how are you using x prize. this is great. a rocket ship is fantastic. you are expanding this to solve ipp tractable problems of humanity that i was touching on. >> fundamentally i believe there is no problem we cannot solve. end point. and what we try to do. at the x prize foundation an incredible group of c.e.o.s, people like yourself what are grand challenges that should be solved. and we incentivize entrepreneurs around the world. they have access to technologies access to crowd funding, to attack the problems and solve them. as you know we have the quag contry we launched a global

learning x prize, software that can teach a child to read write, do maths, in 18 months. we are nearing the pinnacle of the google lunar x prize, down to five milestone winners demonstrating landing capability to get them to the moon. it's about entrepreneurs taking on the role that governments and industrialists have done before. many will swing the bat at the biggest problems. they are the world's biggest business opportunity. >> how do you decide in a world where everyone distrusts everyone how do you make sense of making sure the decisions about what the challenges are, are the right ones for humanity. i know this concerns you. >> we pull in the smartest people. where we get to. we call it the trustee vision earring that we do every may. amazing c.e.o.s are there, i want to get to a point where we

ask the world to vote on the problems they want solved and tee up the problems. they might crowd fund the prizes and attack it. we have a platform called hero x. i think we are entering a world in which you can stop complaining about problems and solve them. that's the mindset i want to create out there. we do this in university, at x prize, and i think today's entrepreneurs can think about, you know not only becoming wealthy, but a billionaire by helping a billion people. >> the book like the last one "abundance", remarkable is an optimistic look at the future by someone that studied it well. you are a futurist and all the guys somehow they have spokes to you, i appreciate the great work. peter is the c.e.o. of x prize and author of a book on sale

today. we heard peter, we heard richard branson talking about rallying business to combat global climate change. how do we deal with denial about climate change in our own society. you are watching "real money", tell me what is on your mind. keep it here back in 2 minutes. >> mr. president >> who should answer for those people

tell me what is on your mind.

in the midst of a debate over climate change there was a fight over how to teach kids what is happening to the environment. the state board of education wanted to amend curriculum to include the possibility that

climate change is not man made. push back forced the board to postpone a decision. it parallels a debate in the senate. climate change is not a hoax but stopped short of naming the cause. if some leaders can't acknowledge manmade climate change where does it lead schoolboard, teachers and students? joining me is a host of the new pbs series "earth", a show that premieres tomorrow and the vice president of conservation international. great to have you here thank you for being with us. >> thank you. >> i've been studying some of the things you have written. you believe like many people that the debate about science and climate change is over in most people's heads. >> most people's heads, yes. >> not in the heads of those that govern the nation. when i travel overseas i get quizzical looks about why are you science deniers in the united states.

that's when i tell them i'm canadian. it's not over anywhere. unfortunately these things work themselves through education systems and things like that. >> at the end of the day you have to teach science and stick to that. any big progress scientific discovery, you know when we invented - figured out germs - it had that push back. for me i try to get out of the debate. most agree that some part of climate change... >> is due to humanity. >> that's the only part you can influence. you go out, i live in montana. they know something can happen. i talk to them where they are at in their space about what marts to them. >> part of the idea in your world doesn't matter. people are changing people's games are changing. your audience is an audience

subscribing to the idea that some part of climate change may be man maid. >> yes, and i belong to an organization it's a bipartisan thing. there's no point leaving people out of the tent. you need that majority to move it forward. so that is sort of the way i approach that. your view is that we need to not be too concentrated on the idea that humans are bad for the planet. >> we made major impacts, but benefitted on it. on virtually every measure humans are doing better today than years ago. >> many are unintended consequences we inhave notted the technology before realising what damage it would do. >> of course. we under value these things like nature that ultimately provides a great deal of benefit. >> you think the presentation has to be different. >> we were talking about farmers. >> you like to make this human centric to get them involved as

opposed to polar bells and melting ice. >> i wanted to do a documentary, an epic thing that looks and feels good getting people on the seats. embedding the story within it. there's no point showing the planet as a pristine eye in the sky place, if you're an alien, you came out here realising that 7 billion of us are here. i want to show you the magnificent dramas but with people in it. >> you also point out very interestingly, you're sri lankan, you were born in sri lanka. >> i was born in sri lanka. >> you made an interesting point that to a lot of people the climate change people the environment was a white person's problem, a developed world's problem. there might be an interesting take on the idea that you are not from that world. >> look you know ultimately this is a global show going on pbs and national geographics around the world. if you want to move the heart,

mind and pocket book the messenger is important. >> i'm looking forward to this. glad you were here to talk about this. the host of pbs's "earth", a 5-part series starting tom. >> big damages - plenty of help from s&p from investors that manage your money, your pension fund or the city. s&p got its punish the today. we talk about if it's close to enough when "real money" returns.

this. this.

we can add standard&poor's to a list of companies to company that created the financial crisis it gives credit rating and bonds to investors agreed to by $1.4 billion to the federal government, 19 states and the district of columbia settling fraud charms that s&p invited mortgage backed securities that it knew would default. they were the spark that burnt down the housing market and brought on the worst recession since the great depression. the government said what almost everyone nose conflicts of interest motivated s&p to keep rateings high the banks that stole it happy. >> i wish i could tell you the punish the that s&p got is what they deserve the, but i can't. here is why. they didn't admit wrongdoing something doesn't feel right even though they signed a statement of fact acknowledging

improper conduct. >> second, 1.4 billion is a cry from the 5 billion that the department of justice said it wanted. that said the amount is about 1.5 times the annual profit of mcgrath hill. is stings in this case. the question is whether it stings enough to change the way ratings companies do business. i'll pose that question to a man that says ratings companies may be the group most responsible for the financial collapse in 2008. it's columbia law school director john kofi serving at the center for corporate governance a former advisor, and the new york stock exchange at the campus in new york. i'd like to see you on the show for something that is not talking about bad things that happened. let me ask you about your comments. the ratings agency was at the heart of what happened. they didn't do some of the bad

stuff. it is the pictures funds, the investment firms, and the cities making investments based on ratings that suffer. >> this was a giant bubble. and it fools the bubble with air. they are not alone in culpability, the group that did securitizations would have done the whole process. i don't think they would have got the collapse which occurred in the years 2000 to 2008. >> we can debate whether or not it makes sense, and i'll ask you about this in a minute. whether the companies should be allowed to have the settlement without admitting wrongdoing. let me ask you, fundamentally does this change the system whereby the companies and the instruments that are being rated are paying the bills of the company that is rating them. >> this does not structurally change the system. we have the issue of the pays

system and that moons that the rating agency is pleasing its client, the issuer or the underwriter. in that world if you don't please the issuer they may go to a different agency and there's a difference that makes it more possible to switch. >> in this case i mean it's behind the pursue of regulators to say we need a different system a system whereby the investor i want to remind my viewers where they say i don't buy the bonds, securitized mortgages, maybe you did not. maybe the town that you live in did. we heard many of these stories. this affects more people than one might think. has anyone proposed a better system. >> there has been a number of proposals. congress considered ideas such as switching from an issuer pays to subscriber pay system which you may not realise until the late 1960s, both standard&poor's

and moody's charged the subscriber, not the issuer. it fell apart with the invention of the xerox machine, making it impossible to change the ratings. we had a subscriber paid system. i think we can go back to variations of that. it requires congress and the f.c.c. focus hard on it. i don't think the f cc thought about fundamental change to this deal. they are looking at forcing the is to be dotted and ts crossed. >> i tell you, i have an issue as a regular human, the companies agree to pay fines and settle charges. i had an inkling that that was changing with regulators and the department of justice. they can still do this? >> we are seeing deferred prosecution or agreements in which you don't admit nor deny the charges. this is a still settlement. in this settlement the biggest

sticking point held the sell bant up was a desire to have s&p admit they inflated ratings and insiftens that if they did that multi penalties. there'll be private litigation helped by the settlement. but they don't get the demrights that they wanted. this is a settlement both to the middle. >> what would happen if s&p signed a statement of fact. >> that's compromised. this is here are the core facts, more than the neither admit nor deny settle less than bleeding guilty as you normally do about the prosecution. this may or may not be admissible in later proceedings. they'll try to sight those findings, and say this proved something. they won't say it was a fraudulent intent.

that leads open a problem proving fraudulent intent. >> thank you, a professor at columbia university law school and center of corporate governance. that is our show for today. i'm ali velshi, thank you for joining us.^ break that is our show for today. i'm ali velshi, thank you for joining us. deadly crash - a packed train slams into a car on one of the nation's busiest railways. fire smoke, and fatalities on the ride home from work. taking revenge - jordan executes would prisoners calling it retaliation for the death of a fighter pilot burned alive by i.s.i.l. prescription heroin how one city is trying to keep addicts alive, by h